“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Once he was in corridor nine, Ellis found it even harder to see where Deacon might have gone. It stretched ahead of him, wide and blank-walled. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide.
Still, appearances could be deceptive. The corridor was clean and uncluttered compared to some of the smaller accessways — in less central areas of the ship, corridors were little more than spaces between compartments, and were often narrow and tangled with systemry. There were places where two men simply could not get past each other for all the ducting on the walls, and if any crewmember met another coming the other way in such a place, they would have to agree as to which of them would back up to a wider point.
This corridor, running along the ship’s spine between the upper hull and the roof of the bomb bay, was kept free from such obvious obstructions. But in many places the wall panels could be removed to reveal storage areas, equipment lockers, access to systems. If Deacon had, as was looking increasingly likely, been attacked, he could quite easily have been concealed in such a place.
The marines Meyers had assigned to Ellis had already been briefed on that possibility. There were four of them, all armed, all carrying tactical lights clipped to their weapons. The emergency lighting made the corridor gloomy, a flat, grayish twilight that made details vanish. Ellis was as glad of the extra illumination as he was of the firepower.
“All right, this is where the camera last picked Deacon up,” he told them, pointing a few meters up the corridor. “We know he didn’t come back past this point, or at least not until the ship broke out. We’ll start here and move forward.”
The squad leader’s name was Spencer. He moved a couple of steps past Ellis, then turned back to him. “Colonel, we’ll run a fast sweep of the corridor first, make sure nothing’s obviously screwy. If it all looks clean, we’ll come back and start taking the walls down. Agreed?”
“Sounds good.”
Spencer gestured for the squad to follow him, then moved cautiously off down the corridor. Ellis took up position behind them, his own firearm drawn and held high. He would have liked to have gone ahead of the marines, but there were protocols to be observed. Putting himself in harm’s way to look good in front of a marine squad would have not only been foolish, but would have put others in jeopardy. The marines were here to search for Deacon, not to project him while he did the job himself.
He stayed close, though. There was no way he was simply going to hang back and watch them work.
Spencer had reached the next camera. “Colonel? He never made it to this one, am I right?”
“You are.”
“Not much of a blind spot.”
“Big enough. Needs redesigning, as soon as we get back. Anyway, my gut feeling is that whatever happened, happened here.”
The marine nodded. “Well, there’s only about six of these panels that will come off. If he’s here, it won’t take long to-“
“Sir!” One of the other marines was beckoning him to the far side of the corridor, closer to the first camera. “There’s something here.”
Ellis followed Spencer over. The marine who had called out was down on one knee, his taclight aimed at the floor. “I almost slipped up on this, Sir. Thought it might be blood, but it’s not…”
There was a fluid on the floor, but the marine was right; it wasn’t blood. Ellis could see a faint glisten along the edges of two floor panels, as though something had seeped up between them. He crouched, and drew his finger along the line of wetness.
It was slightly warm, and greasy. When he brought it to his nose it smelled faintly of meat. “What the hell?”
“More over here, sir!”
Spencer walked over to look at the new find. As he did, Ellis saw the marine closest to him put his hand on the panel to push himself upright, and freeze. “Hey, what?”
“What is it?”
The marine shook his head. “Sir, I’m not sure. I can feel… Here, you try.” He drew back.
Ellis touched the center of the panel. “Everybody hold still.”
“Sir?”
“Just stop walking!” He got lower, spread his hand out on the panel. There was a faint vibration there, rhythmic, a repetitive shudder from under the metal floor. Like an engine, pistons moving down there maybe. Or…
“Get this panel up,” he snapped. He stood up, stepped back, found himself wiping his hand reflexively on his jacket.
The panel was about a meter square. There were recessed screws holding it down, and fold-up handles in case engineers needed to reach the crawlspace below. One of the marines stepped forwards with a small powered screwdriver and bent over the panel.
In half a minute, the screws were free. Ellis watched the marine grab one of the handles and, as the lights dimmed in their regular pulse, hauled it up.
It resisted him, as if something sticky was holding it down. The man strained, cursed, and then the panel came free with a wet tearing sound, like the shell being ripped from a live crab. Off-balance, the marine stumbled sideways, taking the panel with him and exposing what lay beneath it to the light.
Beside him, dimly, Ellis heard one of the marines give vent to a choking curse.
The space under the floor panel was full of tissue, crimson and glistening wetly. For a moment Ellis thought that some creature had been butchered down there, had exploded from some ghastly internal pressure and spread it’s flesh and organs among the underfloor wiring. But there was simply too much of it. Almost the whole square meter was covered, a glossy, vein-shot mix of muscle and membrane, and what wasn’t flesh was metal — bright, new metal, impossibly polished, woven into and through the tissue like roots in soil. It was as though some unholy fusion of meat and steel, sinew and wire, ridged tracheal pipe and fluted silver cable had grown under the floor, a sickening, pulsing biomechanical tumor skulking and swelling beneath the shell of the corridor.
And it was alive. Ellis had felt the beat of it through the panel.
He stepped closer, transfixed by horrified fascination, and as he did so a dozen eyes opened in the morass and rolled around to look at him. He saw the pupils contract as they met the light.
The corridor groaned. Beneath his feet, the floor shifted.
He heard the metallic double-click of a P90 being primed, but whoever had done so never got the chance to fire it. In the next instant the floor erupted upwards, panels shrieking as they were torn free of their moorings. The corridor went dark, the fluorescent tubes shattering into dust and shards as the walls buckled. In an instant, the entire space was a chaotic nightmare of spinning taclights, sparks, the shouts of men and the thin, hissing bellows of whatever was squirming its way to freedom from under the floor.
Ellis was on his back. He’d been bowled clean off his feet by the churning corridor, the pistol flung from his grip. He scrabbled at the walls, trying to right himself, but they were slick and warm. There was a haze in the air, a drizzle of grease and blood. It was like being inside a lung.
The marines were still yelling. Ellis heard a scream, choked, cut short by a crunching, meaty impact. A P90 spun past him and he grabbed it, aimed it up the corridor as he rolled over and staggered to his feet.
He saw only chaos. Everything was moving, a ceaseless, whipping motion surrounding a vast and impossibly complex bulk that reared up from its hiding place, huge and strong and reeking of meat and oil. In the stark beam of the taclight, it shone as it rose.
It had already killed one of the marines: Ellis could see the man crumpled against the wall, eyes open and lifeless. Another marine scrambled in, trying to retrieve his comrade, but before Ellis could yell a warning an arm-thick mass of cable and tendon lashed out of the darkness with impossible speed.
The impact was sickening. The marine flew a dozen meters before he struck the deck.
The thing was almost at the ceiling now. Ellis still couldn’t get a grip on its shape — its outline was unstable, seething, writhing like a nest of crimson snakes. As it rose it juddered and shook like an ill-kept machine, as if multiple joints and cables and pistons were dragging it up, protesting, into position. Ellis couldn’t tell if any part of it was flesh or metal, plastic or gristle. It was organic and mechanical, bloody and glittering, and in the heart of it was something crucified, something that lolled forwards, skeletal, and turned its heavy, malformed head towards him to scream out its defiance and pain.